Rim Blow Steering Wheel – Complete Restoration – Picture heavy

This is my last sub-project before getting into the main restoration of the Maverick. After this is complete, I am ready to start taking the Maverick apart, and have it sent to be media blasted.

Here is my Rim Blow Steering Wheel, almost completed, with a custom “Maverick Grabber” center cap still left to finish soon. I have been working on this, on and off, over the last several months. The custom decal that I drew up and had made, needs to be redone, with a smaller diameter, before I finish it out in it’s round case, and put a thick clear coating over it, and counter sink it into the center hole in the pad. I’m showing pictures of it anyway, with the wrong size decal laying on it. Sorry about the poor quality of the photos, I will post some better ones when I finish the center cap.

I wanted the wheel to have a custom look, with influences of the interior of my Maverick Grabber, so it is painted in two tones, including the “Dark Charcoal Metallic” that my Grabber had on the dash, and the other color is a special mix of deep Onyx Black. The paint was covered with 6 layers of clear coat, to give it a permanent, high gloss wet look. I’m still working on the center cap, and having the words “Grabber” added, in a variation of the Factory steer head emblem, in the original font, to give it an added custom touch.














I wanted to do the complete restoration myself, and the only part I did not do myself was the professional paint job. Everything else from start to finish, was done by me, including the crack repair, to priming the wheel with 2k Epoxy Primer, and detailing the rest of the wheel out.

I started the restoration of this wheel back in April, and it’s taking way more man-hours, and is more difficult than I realized it would be, but I am happy with it so far.

I won’t list the lengthy, itemized list of parts, supplies, and steps, that it took to see this steering wheel project through to this point, but if anyone wants more information, I would be happy to provide it.

The steering wheel started it’s life originally as a Ginger colored, Cougar wheel, and I restored it to the black colored style, used on the 1970 Mavericks, and 70’-73’ Mustangs.

Here is a photo of the wheel at the beginning of the restoration when I was filling in the cracks. It had a few of them around the perimeter of the wheel, and took a lot of elbow grease, along with some POR-15 Epoxy Putty, to fill them in.



I did everything from baking the original wheel in my oven, to straighten it, to a lot of sandpaper, and filing with a hack saw blade. I even had to trim some of the interior of the reproduction foam center pad, from Mustangs Unlimited, to get the pad to fit the wheel properly. The tolerances are still not as good as an original factory pad.

For the Rim Blow Switch, that surrounds the inside perimeter of the wheel, I used an improved reproduction style switch, that I noticed only honks the horn, if you squeeze it pretty hard.

For the custom “Maverick Grabber” Center Cap, I drafted up a custom variation on the Factory Maverick “Steerhead” emblem, and added the words “Grabber” to look like the original font. I found a very nice graphics company in Washington state, ironically named Maverick Label, to produce the custom metal foil decal. I will be reordering some with the correct diameter to fit my center cap housing, before I do the final coating. Thanks to Dan Hines for his excellent write up on how he coated his center cap.

Next, I feel sort of nervously excited, to start tearing my car down, and have the car media blasted for body work and paint. I don’t have a spare Maverick setting around, so I will be depending on all the great support in this forum in case I get lost and confused along the way, and forget how to put everything back together!

 

Very impressive wheel restoration.

 

Really nice work!

 

...:Handshake

 

Thank you guys, for the nice comments! I appreciate it!

I will post some more pics when I finish it with the smaller decal soon.

 

Nice work!!!! I love when people can bring something back and make it better than it ever was. Love the quality!!!!

 

Very nice

I remember my 72 Gran Torino Sport having one of those steering wheels

 

Cool. I made my own insert out of a door panel insert, a piece of gray PVC pipe and clear epoxy. The epoxy has yellowed over the years but still looks good.

What did you use for the chrome ring around outside of the wheel?

 

Thanks Dan! Your gorgeous Rim Blow Steering Wheel was obviously an inspiration for mine, and your thread was a huge help.

One dilemma I faced, was that I wanted a nice Wheel, without copying your exact look. That was hard to do, because yours is so nice, and has a really cool NOS door medallion for your center cap. So I did my best by choosing the two tone color scheme, and putting a different center cap in.

Once I finish my wheel's center cap by coating the smaller custom decal in the pipe section, I will shoot it with the silver/chrome paint around the pipe edges. I don't think I want to ever restore one of these wheels again...it was a pain!

 

Very, very nice job!! Better than new!!!


Jim

 

Center Cap Finished

I received the correct size center cap decals, and went ahead and poured the thick, clear coating over the decal. I used Enviro-Tex Lite.

Here are some more pictures of the completed wheel, with the center cap:

 

Looks awesome!!

 

Nice. I have a friend who's daughter's '70 Grabber has that steering wheel. It appears that the car was special-ordered with it, and not an add-on.

 

That wheel was standard on the early 1970 Grabbers.

 

Excellent work, I believe you when you say it was a lot of work.